Re: question about programming

lrbtav wrote:
Hi, I don't know much about programming (windows platform) but I do
have an interest in the discipline. I've noticed that when I install
various programs, some of them mention they were developed in c#, c++,
VB, etc. I understand each of these fall under different generations of
programming languages (5 total). My question is, would the same program
developed in a high gen language such as VB run SLOWER than a program
developed in a 3rd gen language?

That depends on the VB implementation, the 3rd gen language
implementation, and the exact programs written. There are some C
implementations (e.g. EiC) that are much slower than some higher-level
language implementations (e.g. OCaml or CMU Common Lisp). The reverse
is also true.

Even if one implementation is much faster than the other for
"equivalent" code, it's possible that writing equivalent code is far
more difficult in one language than another, and it's often common for
the "straightforward" implementation in, say, C to be very different
(and possibly worse) than the straightforward implementation in, say,
Python or VB. So you need to account for how likely the language and
implementation is to help accomplish the task in a timely fashion.

Moreover, the exact nature of the program is liable to change the
metrics. While looping directly over large Python lists and doing many
mathematical calculations can be slow, using common Python libraries
like Numpy may result in faster (or slower) code than doing things in
C, depending on what C libraries and implementations you're using.

All that is to say that performance is very dependent on the specific
programs and implementations in question. Even very experience
programmers are often surprised at where the time is being spent in
their programs when they benchmark and profile them. You can get a
decent feel for what kinds of tasks and algorithms are going to be fast
or slow, but when you get down to brass tacks you really must benchmark
your particular program on your particular implementation to know for
sure how things are going to turn out.

.

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